I played this game obsessively from 2007 to 2012, more or less, but i haven't kept up with updates ever since. At its peak, this game was incredible, and its enduring popularity is a testament to its excellent original design. They absolutely nailed making each merc unique and instantly recognizable, and giving each their own personality. Furthermore, they developed a lot of extra stuff around the game (the "Meet" videos, the Saxxy awards, the tie-in comics....), which contributed to cementing those characters.

From a game design perspective, as far as i can tell some of the more recent decisions feel... questionable, if not predatory. TF2 has joined the ranks of the many games that are free to play but aggressively monetized. Not big surprise coming from a game that modernized the notion of in-game economy (remember when they hired economists to better understand what was happening with early hat trading?) and basically invented NFTs (let your computer run and burn electricity all night for a chance to mine a rare hat!).

In its current state, i think this game deserves less than four stars. But i played it years ago, back when it was good, and that's how i remember it, hence this rating.

(Oh, also, one time, on Dustbowl, as BLU, we all picked Spy, and all disguised ourselves as BLU heavy, medic, demomen... when the game started, RED saw all of us leave the spawn... and turn invisible. Confusion and hilarity ensued. That's the kind of shenanigans that make this game shines.)

It's impossible to review this game without seeing it in the context of Ocarina Of Time. OOT has been for a long time considered one of the best games ever made, if not the best (before being dethroned by Breath Of The Wild, which shows how strong this franchise is). Majora's Mask was developed in the same engine, with the same tools, reused assets, and was developed at a break-neck pace, releasing a year and a half after OOT. The expectations were sky-high: this was a direct sequel to the greatest game of all time!

And what we got was this disturbing and weird game. Where OOT was more akin to a traditional fantasy tale (the chosen hero retrieves the legendary sword from the stone to go defeat the evil wizard and save the princess), here we get a much more introspective nightmare. There is almost a Souls-like quality to the resignation that permeates the entire world: the world is doomed, and there's nothing anyone can seemingly do about it. Except for you, trapped in a time loop, condemned to relive the end of the world over and over again until you can prevent it. You try to help people fix their lives, but you can't fix everything and save the world in one loop: and on the next reset, they're back to their problems, even if you still hold the token you received that proves you have helped them in a previous iteration. You get your powers by harnessing the souls of dead people of other races to be able to transform into them in an agonizingly painful way!

Despite having dungeons, and heart pieces, and all the things you would expect from a game mechanics perspective, it feels like the least Zelda-like of the franchise, and is often considered the odd one out. But, don't get fooled: it's a timeless (eh) masterpiece.

It's one one those games that you can't review now without taking into account the historical context. It's a game that launched a franchise and an empire, that has been so deeply optimized by speedrunners that the difference for the world record between human and machine is measured in frames. Should you play it in 2023 if somehow you haven't? Yes, probably, if only to witness where it all came from. It's a bit rough, it's difficult, it has puzzles that aren't very well explained... but at this point, it's a historical document more than a game.

I profoundly detested this game. Given the way my brain works, and the fact that i was sick and had nothing better to do when i played it, i still didn't manage to put the controller down until the map read "100%", but finishing it and being able to move on felt like passing a kidney stone. I usually like games, even when flawed, and it's rare for me to be so negative about a game, but it didn't really sit right with me.

The story was passable at best, and lacked a clear and satisfying ending. It's also a gigantic collectathon. Its side content is forgettable, and beyond the celebrity cameos and modern references, it could almost be AI-generated.

But beyond that, my main gripe with it was its morbid and gruesome fascination with death. So many side quests are about people wanting to die, either at your hand so it's honourable, or throwing themselves in fights for the purpose of dying, or literally just committing suicide in front of you. Regardless of their religion, so many of those people seem to want nothing but to die, and ideally the "right way". It's not unusual for games to feature high kill counts, being an agent of death is not something that is intrinsically a problem in a game, but for some reason in this one it felt wrong.

Rating it 1 star and not 0.5 just for its one redeeming quality: at times, outside of all this death worshipping, looking at the countryside... this game could be visually incredibly beautiful. And you could pet the cats. And that's worth something, even if it doesn't save the game.

The main issue with this site is that it only lets you list five favourite games, and that's not enough. TUNIC is an absolute gem, and you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

There are so many things i love about it. Its art style is delightful. The fact that most secrets, including core gameplay mechanics, are hidden in plain sight, waiting for you to discover them and be suddenly gobsmacked by the sudden realisation that it was there all along, over and over again. I love its somehow diegetic booklet, an homage to old NES era instruction booklets in general, and Zelda's in particular. I love its attention to details, its conlang that i never translated but that i know was used to make sound effects musically spell a description of their purpose. I loved the reveal of the central page and the implications thereof, which genuinely caught me by surprise. I loved the challenging (but almost entirely solvable without a guide) extra challenge of finding the true ending.

It is worth noting that there's one aspect in which it almost falls short, however: the difficulty is inconsistent, and has some sudden spikes here and there that remind you why it is compared to a Souls game almost as often as it is compared to a Zelda game. Most difficult fights have cheese strats, there are secret items you can find that help, but if you want to experience this game without it being a gauntlet, there are accessibility options.

Oh and you play a cute fox.

This is a game for couples. This is a game for parents.

It's a creative and varied platforming adventure, always changing. It's goofy, it's light-hearted, it rarely feels difficult. It's also low stakes: you're not trying to save the world, you're trying to save your world: mending your broken relationship by following the inappropriate advice of a macho counselling book, by traversing levels that all represent or explore different aspects of the relationship.

There are few games that fill the niche or "i want to play a story game with my partner" as well as this one does. It's not a story game with co-op added as an afterthought: it's made to be played by two people who bicker and yet work together, who get randomly competitive with mundane tasks.

I initially had my reservations about the theme (sometimes couples don't work out, and trying to make them hold artificially isn't good for anyone), but the game avoids the kind of mistakes i was afraid about, and ends up just being charming.